Lessons From the Night

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Republicans are going to have the largest House majority they’ve seen since 1946. They have won gubernatorial races, congressional races, and Senate races in blue territory. The GOP not only held Florida, Kansas, and Maine, races they were expected to lose, but they gained Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts. They picked up the State House in Minnesota. The GOP did very well in a wave. I was actually kind of wrong. I expected a wave at the state and local level, but did not think there would be one at the national level. There sure was.

In all of this, there are some lessons to learn from the day.

First, two years in a row many pollsters got it wrong. Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, and more all saw polling deviate greatly from the actual returns. They simply over-corrected too much from 2012. We are entering territory where pollsters are going to be less and less useful.

Second, the Republican wave was too great to have been just their effort as opposed to a rejection of Democrats. Republican Governor Rick Scott of Florida held on. Republicans picked up legislative houses in states like Minnesota. These were races that had not looked great for them. There is no issue the GOP rallied around other than being the anti-Obama party. It paid off. Voters, once they taste socialism, reject it in America. They have rejected it. More than 25 of the Senators who voted for Obamacare have now been thrown out by the voters since 2010. The GOP should remember that. They should also remember that the voters clearly believe government itself is the problem and not just Democrats in charge of it. If the GOP wants to lock in gains, they need to show the American people that freeing them from the shackles of government is a winner.

Third, the GOP needs to do to Senate Democrats what Senate Democrats did to them. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)11% is trying to sound conciliatory now. After blocking the GOP and refusing to reach across the aisle or across to the other House, the GOP needs to shut down the Senate Democrats.

Fourth, it turns out social issues are not killers for the GOP after all. Abortion Barbie went down in Texas. Sandra Fluke went down to defeat in California. But the pro-life Amendment 1 won in Tennessee. The default against social issues among rich GOP donors is not the default among the public. Republicans do not need to run on social issues, but they sure as hell do not need to run away from them.

Fifth, Campaign 2014 is another textbook example of media bias. According to the national media, Kansas and Georgia were going to turn blue. Kansas because of Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS)93%, but more importantly because Gov. Sam Brownback decided to force through “unpopular” tax cuts. For weeks, Chuck Todd has been gearing up to claim tax cuts are no longer a winning issue for the GOP. But Sam Brownback got re-elected, as did Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS)93%, and the Kansas Democrats lost seats in the state legislature. The media ignored so much in Kansas. In Georgia, the media bought into the Democrats’ narrative that the state was going blue. In fact, both Nathan Deal and David Perdue won without runoffs. Neither Jason Carter nor Michelle Nunn improved the Democrats’ position from 2010. In fact, in baseline races where there was no heavy partisan activity, Georgia Republicans averaged 58% of the vote. In Florida, Rick Scott beat Charlie Crist. Were you to believe the media for the past three months, there was no way Scott could get re-elected.

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